Custom textures dark in cs and in-game

[thevilefiend]

I'm surprised no one else has had this problem, but I've scoured the internet and the forums and gotten very few results. Also, I hope I'm posting in the right place, but I'm sorry in advance if I'm wrong.

 

I'm making some custom architecture with new textures for a mod and the textures are all showing up dark. It's as if the custom nifs aren't being affected by the in-game lights. They're visible in the cs and in the game, but no amount of lightning can make them brighter. Meanwhile, Bethesda-made nifs I've loaded in the same area look fine.

 

I'm using 3ds Max with the nifscope and .dds plug-ins. I suspect it's something I'm not doing in the material editor, but any ideas are welcome. I took the underscores out of my dds filenames, and I set both the the ambient and diffuse colors to pure white (based on info I found). I also tried exporting a Bethesda model as a new custom nif and it worked fine, so I know it's not the mesh or the export settings I'm using. Unfortunately, importing doesn't load Bethesda's texture in the material editor so I can't compare that part.

 

Does anyone have some ideas? Thanks in advance for any help.

[David Brasher]

It sounds like you do not have a normal map. If you have a texture like Coolsword.dds, then you need an an appropriately generated normal map named Coolsword_n.dds. This part is crucial. One file is ".dds" and the other is ".n_dds". Some items even have a .g_dds glow map. One tool you can use to generate normal maps is GIMP. You would need to download the small and free plugin for that function.

[thevilefiend]

Thanks, David. That's exactly what I needed to fix the problem. I'll have to turn it down since now the brightness is blinding me. I've done a lot of mapping for Quake and Half-Life engine games, but Gamebryo and modelling are both new for me and I'm still learning what the differences are.